We have always figured that internet trolls were sadistic psychopaths, but now we have data proving that “people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).”
There are a number of sites which I love to visit for the articles, but loathe to scroll because their commentator communities are often filled with trolls and other stupidity. To keep my sanity, I have been using Shutup.css to hide comments everywhere, and I highly recommend it. Shutup.css is a custom stylesheet and browser extension which hides all known comment areas, and the extension adds a whitelist feature so you can still read comments on sites where the community doesn’t give you an aneurism.
If you’re tired of trolls or general stupidity on your favorite sites, give Shutup.css a try today!
4 responses
Mostly I just don’t scroll down to the moron & troll section – but interesting use of tech – goes to show that where there is a desire some programmer can figure out how to make things happen
thanks
You’re welcome!
I used to get absorbed in comment sections, no matter how much I wanted to avoid them. Having an extension to hide the especially nasty ones is incredibly liberating.
Reblogged this on alternatekev and commented:
This has been incredibly helpful for me over the past few months.
Hi there,
I’ve been online for a long time and it was reading blogs for years without having one of my own that made me decide to blog myself. In 2007 I closed down successful blog political/environmental because I was no longer willing to deal with trolls. These days I am dually focused on preserving my blog reading enjoyment and increasing my commenting frequency. When I read troll comments it suppresses my desire to comment at all so I think shutup.css is way cool. I will try using the Firefox plugin on the computer I use when I’m multitasking. Thanks for sharing this with us.